Digitalising Asia’s Food Ecosystem: How This Delivery Platform Is Creating Possibilities Beyond Tech

For the past decade since its inception, foodpanda has been in the forefront of providing innovative technological solutions that benefit its merchants, riders, and customers.

Until the last decade or two, pizza delivery required a landline phone call, an hour or so of patience, and payment in cash. Back then, there wasn’t a wide variety of delivery food alternatives, so ordering in was a rare treat. Groceries and food can now be delivered at any time with the push of a button; flying robots can even provide meals to hungry sailors and tourists at sea.

For example, last month, foodpanda made headlines when it became the first company to use drones to carry hot meals from Sentosa to consumers on St. John’s Island. To support this, in August 2020, they conducted a trial run where they successfully delivered 5 packs of ayam penyet (fried chicken “minced”) from South Pier to a boat 3km away in 10 minutes.

Foodpanda has been at the forefront of digital transformation of the food delivery ecosystem, from creating Singapore’s first food delivery platform in 2012 and a mobile ordering app in Singapore in 2012, to testing drone deliveries.

Putting technology in the hands of more users

Starting out in Singapore ten years ago, foodpanda has quickly grown to become Asia’s largest mobile and online food ordering platform, serving users in over 400 cities across 11 markets. 2020 is facing an extraordinary challenge in the world due to the popularity of Covid-19.

Everything changed quickly as people stayed at home, eateries had to limit their menus, and the unstable employment market impacted people’s ability to make a living. Due to the growing importance of same-day food and grocery delivery services, many industries, notably small and medium-sized enterprises, have had to rapidly adopt digital technologies.

Foodpanda invested nearly $50 million in Asia in 2018 to help local communities, digitalize Micro-, Small-, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs), and train and upskill delivery riders, according to its first Social Impact Report.

Foodpanda personnel in Singapore reached out to 200 hawkers across 5 hawker centers in July 2017 to share their knowledge on how to increase sales through online meal delivery.

Mr Amirul Shah, commercial director at foodpanda Singapore, says, “The hawker culture is a big component of Singapore’s food scene and we have to do everything we can to help our hawkers survive this pandemic.” “Technology may seem intimidating to many of our local hawkers; these in-person exchanges helped us better understand their worries and address specific questions they have while utilizing a food delivery platform.”

Using technology for inclusive growth

As a firm believer in the power of technology to improve people’s lives, foodpanda does more than use it to make life easier for its customers and merchants.

Foodpanda invested over $8 million in rider welfare and benefits last year, including safety training, insurance, and financial support for the purchase of bicycles or motorbikes, giving employment opportunities to over 370,000 new riders across Asia, many of whom were workers displaced by the pandemic.

foodpanda spent an extra $120,000 on training programs in language, personal development, and marketing for its riders in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan so that they would be more prepared for the workforce of the future. Through its collaboration with Temasek Polytechnic and the microlearning platform Gnowbe, the company has also released an eLearning portal that provides passengers with quick and easy access to a library of hundreds of courses.

With foodpanda, women, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups in Asia have been given the opportunity to participate in the economy in a dignified manner.

De-mystifying a career in tech

Each day, foodpanda serves more than 10 million customers, merchants, and riders. What’s the magic sauce that makes it work? Foodpanda has spent the past decade cultivating a team of committed software professionals.

Through initiatives such as mentorship programs with local tertiary institutions and training programs for new entrants and mid-career employees, foodpanda has made careers in technology more accessible to the local workforce.

For example, last year, foodpanda invested 19,500 hours towards guiding mid-career workers in its Singapore Tech Hub toward jobs in data and software engineering through its GoSchool and #GetReadySG programs.

An illustrious example is Mr. Muhammad Azhrin Bin Azahari. In 2015, he began working as a delivery rider on the side. The 33-year-old would listen to the worries of his fellow riders and relay them to the foodpanda team at weekly team meetings.

Because of his obvious charisma and popularity among riders, the company hired him full-time in 2016 and gave him responsibility for launching foodpanda in Malaysia. His return to Singapore in 2017 resulted in a promotion to the position of area manager, where he now works to balance the needs of riders with those of delivery drivers.

Mr. Muhammad Azhrin says, “I said yes right away because I wanted to be a part of a team that makes a difference in people’s lives.” I hope to contribute to the expansion of foodpanda over the next few years and develop along with the company.

Foodpanda’s regional headquarters are in Singapore, and they’ve grown from 285 people working there in 2019 to more than 1,200 now. Almost 10,000 ‘pandas,’ as employees in foodpanda are fondly called, work hard every day to improve the platform, the ecosystem, and the lives of their local communities by 1%.